Like South Dakota, South Bend gets all the credit.  You never hear about North Bend, Indiana, do you?  I’m not even sure there is a North Bend.  Sounds cold up there.

It’s not cold in South Bend.  We’re still getting that humid and warm weather that has followed us since we left Denver on Sunday.  The pollen is out in force, too, augmented by fluffy storms of cottonwood seeds.  It’s actually pretty nice to sit in the car for a few hours with air conditioning and a cabin air filter.

Our travel today brought us past the  least pleasant portion of our journey: the truck-dominated concrete corridor of I-80 as it passes south of Chicagoland.  It was bumpy, congested, occasionally slow, and often ugly.  We paused only briefly, to drop off Glassie the fiberglass dog to her new owner, Brad.

Here’s Brad posing with Glassie (still wrapped in her protective cocoon of recycled paper), and Eleanor and Emma on the auspicious moment of delivery, in the parking lot of a Harley-Davidson dealership.  Sorry, Glassie was a bit camera-shy so if you want to see a picture of her you will have to check out Brad’s blog.  If we are all lucky he will post a picture there someday.

The rest of our route was absolutely not worth talking about, but the destination has made the day’s drive well worth it.  We are again courtesy parked with friends, this time in South Bend, IN, under a giant shady tree and near a 34-foot Airstream that belongs to our hosts.

This particular stop is memorable because it was Day One of the Tour of America blog.  We stopped here right after picking up our Airstream Safari, totally intimidated by the huge new trailer and trying to figure out how everything worked.  We did not have the slightest inkling at that time that we would end up living in that trailer for three years!

This is the first time we’ve come back to this spot since then, about four and a half years ago.  Some things have changed, but our good friends here have not, and that’s all that matters. We’ll have a nice time parked in the driveway.  Our plan is to stay for two nights, then head up into Michigan for a night to make one more pre-Alumpalooza stop.